Monday, October 30, 2017

When it comes to big corporations in skateboarding, I’m more baffled than threatened. I have a lot of questions. I know skating is more popular now than ever before but does that really mean Sean Malto can effectively sell Mountain Dew to the masses with his skateboarding prowess? Does anyone who doesn’t skate really care about skateboarding in any profitable way? Does P-Rod’s Axe scent smell better if you apply it with your non dominant hand? I’m not an advertising expert or a demographer. I’m barely an expert on skateboarding. Maybe my inner skate rat just can’t comprehend that anyone really gives a shit about skateboarding.

Sunday, October 15, 2017

We experience skateboarding with all of our senses, but we consume it with our eyes. Ironically, when you are actually skating, what you see is the least important part of the experience. The feeling of weightlessness in the air, the vibration of the grind through your feet, the sound of trucks on concrete: These are the things skaters are really chasing after when they ride. Yet the increasing emphasis on watching skateboarding, from pro vids to your own selfies, can make it real easy to lose sight of this.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

(Recent editorial changes at RIDE channel mean I may not be contributing to the site anymore. In my time at RIDE I contributed a few things that were in limbo in terms of publication. Now that the restrictions are off, I thought I would post a couple of pieces here. Enjoy.)

The inclusion of Skateboarding in the Olympic Games has a lot of skaters up in arms. The way some are talking, you would think the International Olympic Committee was coming to personally focus their boards and stopper all their spots. In reality, the Olympics are way down the list when it comes to threats to skateboarding. It's time for some perspective: here are 7 threats to skateboarding that are way worse than its inclusion in some international sports prom that only takes place every four years.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Ron Allen gets a lot of respect for skating hard and putting out street parts at 53, but to really get it you have to put that number in perspective: at 53, that makes Allen 4 years older than Mark Gonzales, 4 years older than Eric Dressen, and 3 years older than Natas Kaupas. When H-Street exploded with Shackle Me Not way back in 1988, Ron was already 25 years old… practically ancient by 1980’s pro standards… but he’s still going, and going all out.

But Ron Allen is not just a skate rat with a storied career, He’s a man who really thinks about skating, a man who has taken decades of experience and refined it into real insight.

So, when I ask Ron the million dollar question: is today’s big-time, mass popularity era of skating better than the nostalgic, underground hard scrabble days of the 80’s, I get an answer that spins us off into a lot of different directions.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

When Welcome skateboards apparated onto the scene in 2010, they immediately got attention for putting out boards that looked like no one else's. With team riders like Chris "Mango" Milic, and Eric Winkowski bending minds in their Monarchs Of Magic vid, they just as quickly gained a rep as the team that skated like no one else. A lot has changed since Monarchs. A brand that began as a quirky oddity, has grown to become much more than just the common ground between old warhorses looking for the glory days and millenial hipsters burning to be "different". Welcome is now a wildly successful a-list company. The distinctive boards that once set them apart are now representative of the status quo. With Welcome's new full length video Fetish, the same might be said to have happened to the team's skating.

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A (Lack Of) A Life In Skateboarding

This blog is about myself and all the other skate dorks I met and skated with over two decades of being an average skater in the trenches of middle america. It’s an attempt to not only create a sort of counter-history of skateboarding, but also to create an analysis of skateboarding's evolution. Skateboarding never really came to its own until it not only separated itself from surfing, but when it ceased to be an activity primarily driven by vertical skating. There were certainly members of skatings professional elite who facilitated this change, but their efforts only met with success because they were reflective of what all those kids in the heartland and the flyover regions and the inner cities needed and wanted. It is a process not only important in and of itself but important because it represents the way skateboarding is a subculture and art form that not only constantly evolves, but often evolves form the bottom up.